Before being recognised as Voltaire's magnum opus, Candide first met with great scandal: after its publication, the book was banned to the public because it contained religious blasphemy, and intellectual hostility.

1,000 hand numbered copies

This edition is set be released in two separate print runs. The first is dressed in a green slipcase and hand numbered from 1 to 1,000. The second print run will be ivory colored, limited to 1,000 copies.

A precious manuscript, found and published for the first time after centuries lost

For years, everybody, including Voltaire specialists, thought this manuscript lost. It was found in 1957, in the vast archives of th Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. Les Éditions des Saints Pères is glad to present this manuscript to the public for the very first time.

Replete with spelling mistakes

To the casual eye, the seemingly elegant manuscript represents all of the subtle refinement that we assign to the eighteenth century. Upon closer inspection, another text begins to surface, replete with the numerous spelling mistakes, making it all the more enjoyable to the modern reader’s sensibility.

The rules of French spelling, anchored by the Académie Française and their 1835 dictionary nearly a century after the Enlightenment author’s time, allowed Voltaire to write in a language free from the strict rules that now define the modern French language.

The book was bound at Ateliers Babouot in Lagny-sur-Marne, France. Each slipcase was handmade in France.